Sharing Writing Tips and Writerly Musings

My last post was on asexual representation. Literally. Today, I bring you the flip side. I mostly write younger stuff or fade-to-black scenes to avoid any explicitness of this issue, but a lot of you out there are writing it as the forefront of your novel.

At the titular panel, moderated by Jennifer Povey: D’Amanda Martini, Nobilis Reed, Mark L. Van Name, and Lisa Hawkridge managed to keep on topic WHILE keeping it all about books and writing. I was VERY impressed.

Relationships: Marriage and Divorce

For much of history, sex and sexuality revolved around marriages — on either side of the covers. When writing a story, you don’t have to be bound by your cultural assumptions. Your characters should be bound by the cultural assumptions of the time and place they’re in. In historical or contemporary settings — do your research. In science-fiction or fantasy? You can make relationships look like whatever you decide.

Here are some things to consider when worldbuilding.

How are relationships made official?

Does your world have a body (church/government/etc) recognizing and validating relationships?

Or are relationships self-declared? To oneselves? Or to the gods?

What are the societal expectations that go with a committed relationship?

Who is allowed to have an official relationship? And to whom?

Are marriages for life? Or do they have an expiration date?

How does inheritance work? Blood lines matter more when something’s at stake.

One can look to the animal kingdom for relationship styles beyond the cis-hetero-marriage for life default-assumption of most of the Western world.

Like this:

Some people are sexually attracted to the opposite gender, some are attracted to the same gender, while others are attracted to more than one gender, and yet others are only sexually attracted under specific circumstances?

But, not all people are sexually attracted to someone. Those people? Identify as asexual.

Especially in Western culture, so many of our stories — be they folktales of yore, current tv shows, books, or movies — center around the main character’s relationship. Even if it’s not the main plot point.

For asexual people, they’ve had to read-between-the-lines to look for characters that represent them.

Is this character asexual? Or did the story just not cover a period of their life where they were in a relationship.

Is that character sexual? Or are they in a consensual sex-free romantic relationship?

At the titular panel, at WorldCon 77, Wendy Metcalfe, Darcie Little Badger, Dr. Edmund Schleussel, and Jasmine Gower discussed ways to make the asexual textual, without making it feel forced.

3 Reasons Not Making the Asexual Textual is a Problem

There is already a sparsity of asexual representation

Readers will project on the asexual characters and make assumptions

Many readers enjoy ‘shipping characters, and will mentally pair them up, or insist that there’s subtext

Shipping characters – Shipping is short for ‘relationship”, it’s when readers (and/or fanfic writers) decide they think two (or more characters) should be in a relationship.

Fanfic – is fiction written by fans about the characters from tv/movies/books that they want to see. Unofficial spin-offs. Like Paradise Lost is Biblical fanfic.

In fanfiction circles, “slash fiction” originated as stories pairing character A – slash – character B. A lot of the derivative stories have been traditionally homosexual pairings, but not always. And some of them, explicit erotica.

4 Approaches Making Asexual Characters Textual

Avoid the terms, but make it obvious in the plot

Make up terms in your story to represent asexual — or the reverse. Why not make a story where asexual is the default, and everything else must be defined?

Slip in the term

Worries it will feel dated

Have it as a small detail in a larger descriptive sentence

4 Overdone Asexual Tropes To Avoid

Having them focus on how their asexuality makes them weird or different. Asexual people typically don’t dwell on their lack of sexuality during their normal day-to-day lives.

Morgan question: What about thinking about how sexuality makes everyone ELSE weird?

Naivety – not understanding what sex is

Being repulsed by sex

Making the asexual character alien, or a robot, or inhumane in some way (very often Death itself).

Non-heterosexual characters being used as code for a ‘bad person’

How Being Asexual Affects A Person’s Life

No co-dependencies. Living alone is expensive and is easier with a profession.

Like this:

In a grimdark world, filled with truth, lies, and politics many of us have been longing for a literary escape that can give us some hope. For this generation, Hopepunk is our solution.

At WorldCon 77 Dublin, Jo Walton, Lettie Prell, and the creator of the term, herself, Alexandra Rowland, on a panel moderated by the marvelous Sam Hawke discussed the true meaning of Hopepunk.

What Is Hopepunk?

After the term hit NPR and Vox, it started to shift from what was originally intended to something lighter and shinier.

Luckily for all of us, we had the coiner of the term there to set the record straight, aided by the creator of the SFWA bulletin, formally acknowledging the genre. (SFWA stands for Science fiction Writers of America)

It’s the counter to grimdark

Stories to support people

The emphasis should be on the punk, with a core strength of hope

Punk in its need to “fight the man”

Hope in its goal that “we deserve a better world”

It’s contemporary fantasy or near-future

It’s characters don’t give up — they stand up, resist, and fight back

It’s characters are ordinary people who care

The characters don’t have to win, but they do have to make a difference, and offer hope for a better future.

Some might wonder why we need a term for this. Why we even need subgenres at all.

3 Reasons Why We Need Subgenres

Naming something help defines it and the beliefs or story expectations that go with it

Why Hopepunk Now?

Hopepunk is a reaction to the current political, cultural, and physical environment. During times of prosperity and progress, grimdark reminds us to fight complacency. During times of stagnation and fear, Hopepunk is reminding us that we’re not powerless.

We were reminded of that quote:

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

G.K. Chesterton

In Western culture, so often we consider literature more serious, more worthy when it is cynical, ironic, and distant.

Western culture finds the upbeat, shiny stories found in 1950’s sci-fi to be trite and naive. Then, extends that opinion to anything that isn’t full of cynicism. Which leads to interesting circumstances, like award winning novels failing to warrant academic acclaim.

We need to remember that human acts of kindness are common and real and normal.

Do you think Hopepunk is right for you? Ordinary people fighting back, and making a difference — even if they can’t win the day?

Do you know any stories you think would be a good fit for this genre?

P.S. After this post went up, I got a few questions on Hopepunk’s relationship to Solarpunk. Here’s what I came up with as the answer to:

What’s the difference between Hopepunk and Solarpunk?

I’m less familiar with Solarpunk, but according to google:

“Solarpunk is a genre of Speculative Fiction that focuses on craftsmanship, community, and technology powered by renewable energy, wrapped up in a coating of Art Nouveau blended with African and Asian aesthetics.”

So. I’m gonna say the difference lies in the emphasis of ‘punk’ — ie “Fighting against the man”, with less of a focus on renewable energy, and a less defined aesthetic.

They are clearly related genres and there could easily be overlap between the two.

Like this:

Now that YA (young adult) novels are such a large part of the book landscape, it can be a challenge to know where a novel fits. Coming of age stories have always been a large part of the fantasy genre in particular, but now, it can be hard to know where to draw the line between YA and Adult novels.

In days of yore, there wasn’t this issue. There was the children’s section — divvied up by reading level, and the adult section — divvied up by genre. But, with the emergence of the YA market, most famously heralded by JK Rowling, the distinction got a lot fuzzier.

What Is A Coming Of Age Story?

Before we can decide if a coming of age story is Adult or YA, we need to define what a coming of age story is.

It’s a character on the cusp of becoming.

The character has to grow, to change, and to find a life that suits their new self. Be it a high schooler graduating, an apprentice slaying that dragon, or a teacher retiring, a story focusing on the transition to the next stage of one’s life is almost always a coming of age story.

6 Ways To Tell If Your Coming Of Age Novel Is YA or Adult

There are a few key things that help determine if your coming-of-age novel should be in the adult section or will find a better home in the YA section.

The length

adult should be over 70,000 words

The voice

YA should have a genuine teen voice — not necessarily snarky!

YA is more often 1st person POV (point of view)

YA has faster pacing

The story’s focus

Adult novels handle more adult issues

aging parents

kids

jobs

etc

YA novels typically focus on a single week/month/year. Adult novels are typically more open to a longer time frame. (added thanks to Dal Cecil Runo‘s insightful comment on my vlog version of this post.)

The character’s relationship with authority

YA typically has teens breaking away from what was once their authority figures (parents/etc)

Sentence structure

Adult tends to dwell more on detail

Adult tends to have a higher reading level

Reading level is calculated based on some formula including syllables per average word and sentence length.

Where does the marketing department think it’ll do better?

YA Without “Coming Of Age”

YA isn’t just coming of age novels!

The main character learning the truth about their world — or their self

There’s a partial coming-of-age, but the character doesn’t fully come into their own

Instead of ‘happily ever after’, there’s a ‘happy for now’ feel

In series novels, especially mysteries, the main character doesn’t usually change. Instead, they follow the genre story template.

Hopefully, these tips can help guide you down the narrow line betwixt and between the two.

One final thought – as a warning for those of us who are writing what we think is YA as adults: teens are SICK of ‘adults in kid-suits’ thinking things teens wouldn’t and the whiny/emo teen is overdone.

We need to represent teens more authentically, or leave it to those who are teens or still close to their teens.

What are YOUR favorite coming of age novels?Let me know if they’re YA or Adult — and why!

Are there any differentiators I missed or the panel didn’t have time to address?

Like this:

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Morgan Hazelwood is a fantasy novelist who blogs and vlogs writing tips and writerly musings.
She likes taking pictures of the sky, reading a good book, and ambiverting from her living room. She's also a voice for the fairy-tale audio drama: Anansi Storytime and its sister podcast: Legendsmith.
She's been known to procrati-clean her whole house and alphabetize other people's bookshelves.